Yesterday we had a look at the differences between the Street View layers in the new Google Earth, Google Earth Classic and Google Maps – with emphasis on user contributed content. Since the new Google Earth was released we wondered whether its imagery layer is based on Google Earth’s default layer, or Google Maps.

We noticed that some new imagery has been added to Google Earth Classic. As is usually the case, the new imagery can only be found in the default layer and has yet to be added to ‘historical imagery’. Also, the new imagery has not yet been added to Google Maps. This is the perfect opportunity, so we compared all three products. The location is Arequipa, Peru, where a new image dated April 4th, 2017 has been added. We are looking at the edge of the image.

Google Earth Classic. The new image is on the left half of the screenshot and is distinguishable as being greener than the older image.

New Google Earth

Google Maps

So it would appear that the new Google Earth either shares the Google Maps imagery database or has its own unique database. We noticed slight differences in colouring between new Google Earth and Google Maps above, but discovered that was caused by the street names and other labels and when we turned those off in Google Maps the images were identical.

If you come across any interesting sights in the new imagery, do let us know in the comments. The most interesting images will probably not be visible until the update is published to ‘historical imagery’.